My Wishlist

Full Moon Over Wowtown

NYC's mad scientist spices his haunted daydreams, manic cartoon music and ocean lullabies with self-made instruments like the motorized Cadillac Beatspinner as well as gypsy strings, theremin, toy piano and more for a richly rewarding listening adventure.

Genre: Rock: Modern Rock

Release Date: 2002

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ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

"Magnificent!" - Neil Cooper, the Herald (Scotland)

"A weird, wonderful masterpiece" -Spendid Magazine

"One of the best albums of 2004" -Blather.net

Among downtown New York's solo singer/songwriter set, Thomas Truax is a mad scientist. His carefully crafted songs range from dark, romantic lullabies to lively rock melodramas. He plays them against the backdrop of his "Cadillac Beatspinner Wheel", a motorized mechanical sound sculpture that Thomas built himself.
Made up of junkyard bits and pieces including a bicycle wheel with collapsible mallets attached, the Beatspinner contraption spins, clicks, clacks, flashes and chimes at various tempos. It's a proudly pre-digital age drum machine. Yet another invention, an instrument he calls The Hornicator, is a distinctly Dr. Seussian thing that makes sounds like might be heard in a sci-fi movie from the 1950s.

FULL MOON OVER WOWTOWN
Thomas's debut CD is a cinematic and often dreamlike ode to the moon. Haunted daydreams, manic cartoon music and ocean lullabies are all brought to life in a production that not only features his strange inventions and distinct vocal and multi instrumental talents, but those of friends including Paul Wallfisch (Firewater, Botanica) playing organs, pianos and music boxes; Meredith Yayanos (Barbez, Vanity Set) adding gypsy strings and theremin, and Dan Coates (Barbez/Rebecca Moore) phoning in his own palm-pilot programmed sounds from outer space. Even jazz legend Gil Goldstein (Chet Baker, Joe Lovano, Gil Evans, etc.) drops in briefly for some accordion meets Hornicator action. At times, real drummers including Francois Lardeau (Marc Ribot, Chocolate Genius) Scott Hartley (Liquid Liquid, Like Wow) and Erin Gillgannon take turns with and/or play on top of the Beatspinner's gentle mechanical clattering.
An adventurous, hypnotic and distinctly moonlit listening experience.

"There are a few, very few, artists so original and inspired that their creativity slops right over the edges of their music and floods the whole damned room. What Thomas Truax leaves on the floor for the waitress to mop up is a better brew than most people put right there on the table.
Smart, beautiful, eccentric, exceptional -- if these are the kinds of words you attach to the music you love best, you need to drop whatever you're doing and get this album right now." - -Jennifer Kelly,
SPLENDID

"...It's a bewildering melange of garage rock songs, avant garde sounds and cabaret showtunes, full of whistles, toy piano, ice cream chimes and invented instruments... with shades of Tom Waits' storytelling, Nick Cave's theatricality and Lux Interior's howling-at-the-moon madness.
There's even yodelling on 'Shooting Stars'. That moon reference is significant as this is a sort of concept album tribute to the moon as it shines on the fictional Wowtown. It's all done in a larger than life, cartoonish way...You get the feeling that it's too large a world to be contained in a small silver disk. It's a soundtrack to a film that might never be made but the mind pictures that it conjures are so evocative that maybe it doesn't need to be..."-Ged M, SoundsXP 2/04

Loony tunes for loony times. Perfect Halloween mood music. Manic but not crazy. Crazy but not a "bad" crazy. May cause one to caterwaul at the moon. Real instruments play with dream instruments. For fans of the Lonesome Organist.

Played on the radio program SwaG! ( swagradio.org ) by your host Bat Guano. Listeners call, ask "Who is this?!?" They seem happy.

Hey man this is a pretty different sound from what we is realy used to (can't think of who it reminds me of but then thinking was not one of my strong points} I do like the title track. Can't wait to see the instigagtor of such tunes at the Bakers in Stockport. Must buy this C.D. though.